Hello! Atm i have Windows XP and my computer spec:
CPU - AMD Athlon ll X2 250 3.01GHz
RAM - 2,00GB
GPU - NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT

In Game without any action (at the beginning) i have around 70-80fps. In the middle of battle its decreasing to 30-50fps.

Will windows 7 slow down my game ? I Heard that windows 7 is using almost 90% of RAM and stuff so im not sure if i should change to win.7.
help me guys ;f

YarNhoj

United States69 Posts

April 29 2011 06:34 GMT

Xp and win7 use RAM in different ways. 7 tries to use up all your RAM first before it uses the page file. This makes it faster in the sense that RAM is faster than a pagefile on your hard drive. If you are going to stay at 2GB of RAM then there is really no reason to worry about win7. If you are willing to upgrade to 4GB (32bit) or higher (64bit) then 7 will run much better than xp. Personally if you are not going to upgrade past 4 GB of Ram I would stay with XP. The real benefits of 7 can't be seen until you are above the 4GB of RAM threshold. (You will need the 64bit version.)

nttea

Sweden4353 Posts

April 29 2011 07:13 GMT

ya with your current specs and with my mediocre knowledge about this stuff it would slow you down noticeably. No reason to change to windows7 with those specs, but an additional 2 gb's of ram and you are good to go

DarKcS

Australia1237 Posts

April 29 2011 08:54 GMT

It's not your RAM that's decreasing your FPS in longer games. It's your 'everything else', with the 8500 card being obviously appalling..
Also it's normal. Most people drop down to <20-35.

JingleHell

United States11308 Posts

April 29 2011 10:51 GMT

According to this benchmark, you're hitting about the point to be expected with that CPU, and could even expect it to drop a bit further. The video card won't be helping matters much. Make your entire system 2-3 years less ancient at a minimum, and you'll see a huge increase in performance.

iloveav

Poland1478 Posts

April 29 2011 11:04 GMT

Well you have a bit slow system, so its not so uncommon. I would recomend satying on xp as well.

JingleHell

United States11308 Posts

April 29 2011 11:18 GMT

The constant "go back to XP" isn't really going to make much of a difference, that CPU is quite capable of dropping to that and far worse framerates in SC2, and his video card is only barely acceptable as well. Graphics settings can help the video card out, but his CPU will be a bottleneck in large supply situations until the end of time.

AnxiousHippo

Australia1451 Posts

April 29 2011 11:22 GMT

I also have a Windows 7 and during big battles it'll slow down but it's probably more lag than the OS.

writer22816

United States5775 Posts

April 29 2011 11:40 GMT

It won't make a difference, just switch to 7 if you want the extra features that 7 provides.

Vista and 7 manage ram differently than does XP; they will seemingly use all your ram when you are idle/just browsing the web, but when you launch a demanding game they will reallocate resources accordingly.

Dagobert

Netherlands1858 Posts

April 29 2011 11:52 GMT

#10

I'm usually sitting around 150-180 FPS mid-game on Windows 7, while on XP I got around 80, so I can't say it slowed me down. Then again, I'm running a shitload of large programming / statistical analysis programs (and the notoriously bloated FF) in the background because I'm too lazy to close them. Having access to the rest of the 8GB RAM probably helps.

Marcus420

Canada1923 Posts

April 29 2011 12:38 GMT

#11

Windows 7 would work perfectly fine.

ensign_lee

United States1178 Posts

April 29 2011 13:52 GMT

#12

Well, windows 7 would help in teh sense that you'd be able to support a better DirectX version, which is a huge difference.

But with 2 GB of RAM...eh. You'd prob be better off just saving for an entirely new system.

zyce

United States649 Posts

April 29 2011 13:57 GMT

#13

My framerate drops to 45ish, and I'm running an i7-950 with 6GB RAM and a GTX 260 1GB video card (Windows 7). It's not Windows 7, the game is just demanding.

The most important aspect is what your shader settings are in-game. Drop these first. I play on low shader settings when I ladder. This game does not demand much from the CPU when compared to what it asks of your GPU.

JingleHell

United States11308 Posts

April 29 2011 14:00 GMT

#14

On April 29 2011 22:57 zyce wrote:
My framerate drops to 45ish, and I'm running an i7-950 with 6GB RAM and a GTX 260 1GB video card (Windows 7). It's not Windows 7, the game is just demanding.

The most important aspect is what your shader settings are in-game. Drop these first. This game does not demand much from the CPU when compared to what it asks of your GPU.

No, it doesn't demand much from your CPU compared to your GPU. Your GPU is bottlenecking your system. Go check the CPU benchies I posted earlier in the thread. I don't think OS will really make much difference on his PC, because frankly, his performance is mostly related to his low end CPU.

SC2 is very CPU intensive.

SENKi

Poland52 Posts

April 29 2011 14:14 GMT

#15

Thats a lot of good info, but now guys just simply; Should i stay with xp or my win7 gonna be ok?

JingleHell

United States11308 Posts

April 29 2011 14:20 GMT

#16

On April 29 2011 23:14 SENKi wrote:
Thats a lot of good info, but now guys just simply; Should i stay with xp or my win7 gonna be ok?

I'd say don't bother until you upgrade your PC, you won't be able to gain a positive difference, and the potential exists to lose performance. Your PC just isn't going to push that good of performance in SC2 no matter what. I'd suggest looking at the laptop tweaking guide and trying that stuff until you can afford to upgrade.

Just whatever you do, don't buy a new GPU hoping it will boost your performance for a cheap price, it might slightly, but your CPU would bottleneck the system.

SENKi

Poland52 Posts

April 29 2011 14:37 GMT

#17

I dont want to get my game performance better, ill play on low anyways, even if ill have best pc ever. Im just tired of XP and i wanted to try sth better.
Btw. What means "CPU would bottleneck the system" dunno what bottleneck means

JingleHell

United States11308 Posts

April 29 2011 14:49 GMT

#18

Well, if you want to be able to do more with a computer, sometimes you need more computer, and I'd say if you don't want to risk having to reinstall back down to XP, don't risk losing performance with 7.

"Bottleneck" implies the same notion as a literal bottle neck. As in, the neck of a bottle. When you turn a bottle up, the narrowing at the neck slows the rate of flow of the contents. Same notion.

If your CPU is a "bottleneck" it means that your CPU is too slow for your computer to make use of more of something else effectively. If your Graphics Card is too slow for your CPU, like the one guy with the i7 and the 250, he could actually downclock his i7 a bit and not see any real difference in performance, because right now his graphics card is the chokepoint.

If you're ok with the idea of reinstalling XP if 7 doesn't work, go ahead and try. If you don't want to risk wasting money/time/whatever other reason doing that, then don't risk the loss of performance.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2355703,00.asp

This article shows some improvement going to 7 on some things, so you may well be safe, but it comes down to whether you want to try it.

Just bear in mind, this isn't gaming performance. The PCMark test, the closest, shows that low end of hardware doing better on XP.

SENKi

Poland52 Posts

April 29 2011 14:58 GMT

#19

Next question. If i decided to get WIN 7 no matter what, should i get only additional RAM memory or should i get that and do sth with CPU and GPU?. Ofc the better option is gettin everything better but if i would get only RAM it will be ok?